Does social media have a “slop” problem?

When in October 2022 Elon Musk acquired X, then known as Twitter, he declared that one of his main priorities would be to free the platform from bots created to spread spam. However, more than two years later, fake accounts continue to be very active on the platform. The phenomenon is so widespread that numerous memes mocking the absurdity of posts created this way have started circulating. But the phenomenon has long involved Facebook as well, and it is now so vast that it has recently sparked a broader debate among those who analyze typical web dynamics. According to experts, the risk is that the online dimension, once designed for virtual interactions between people, could turn into an ecosystem mainly populated by bots interacting with each other – with users unable to recognize original content stuck in the middle.

The discussion emerged after a series of absurd images created with AI attracted the attention of many people, especially on Facebook and X, generating numerous comments and shares – both from real accounts and bots. These images, although bizarre and seemingly meaningless, are intended to attract a large number of reactions, which increases their chances of appearing in many users' feeds. Usually, the posts hosting these images present a link in the first comment that leads to an external portal: the intent of those who spread them is to increase visits to other websites, generating advertising revenue. It is therefore a form of spam, although much more insidious because it does not involve forced interaction with users. This is a strategy that takes into account the tendency of certain platforms to penalize posts with links in the caption, including Facebook. When talking about these types of images, the Guardian used the term «slop» («mush»). Some comments on these posts suggest that many people are not aware that the images are created with AI. Making it even harder to interpret such content, especially for more naive users, is the fact that many of the comments and shares come from bots – even though it’s not always obvious. To describe the context in which slop develops, the site 404 Media (founded by a group of former Vice employees) spoke of «zombification of social media» – because real users and bots now interact with each other without truly realizing it.

All this has progressively made the feeds of many platforms more absurd and chaotic. Even the advertisements often differ from what was traditionally considered online advertising in the past. On portals like Facebook and X, it is now quite rare to come across sponsorships from recognizable brands or influencers with a coherent communication strategy. Instead, content that follows the slop logic has started to appear – often nonsensical and promoted by unreal users. In this context, posts are not selected by algorithms for their relevance, quality, or meaning, but simply because – on paper – they boost engagement even though they are absurd in themselves. It is increasingly evident that certain platforms are no longer aiming to personalize and make their users' feeds coherent: however, this choice is not due to technical incapacity but rather specific commercial interests, which are related to dynamics like doomscrolling. It is not surprising that Facebook and X are among the platforms where slop is most widespread: both have long been at the center of criticism for a management increasingly oriented towards profit, often at the expense of content quality and user experience. Even though both are less relevant and frequented than in the past, they still hold a massive user base worldwide, and the ease with which their audience is intercepted by slop content is worrying, given that these social media are the main source of news for many segments of the population.